S&C obtained the dismissal with prejudice of a federal criminal indictment against Gautam Adani, chair of the Adani Group, one of India’s largest companies.
Mr. Adani was charged in November 2024 with securities fraud conspiracy, wire fraud conspiracy and substantive securities fraud. The U.S. Department of Justice alleged that the defendant engaged in bribery in India to procure energy contracts and violated U.S. securities and wire fraud statutes when he did not disclose this alleged bribery in bond offerings and loan agreements.
After multiple presentations to prosecutors, in which S&C argued that Mr. Adani’s alleged misstatements were inactionable, the DOJ moved to dismiss, stating: “The securities charges should never have been brought.”
In granting the dismissal with prejudice, Judge Nicholas Garaufis of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York agreed that “the alleged misrepresentations appear to be so broad as to qualify as inactionable puffery.” The court explained: “[I]t is conceivable that the anti-bribery language used in the financial documents is so generic and vague that it would raise legal risks to the prosecution. A court could find that the alleged misrepresentations are more akin to statements regarding compliance with general legal obligations than a specific set of criteria on which an investor would reasonably rely in deciding whether to purchase the securities.”
The S&C team representing Mr. Adani was led by Robert Giuffra Jr., Nic Bourtin, Suhana Han, Andrew DeFilippis and Suniti Mehta, and included Manon Scales, Riley Hanrahan, Ryan McEvoy, Olivia De Silva, Abdullahi Abdi, Sarika Bhattacharjee, Rick Wertheim and Tracey Russell.